DEBKAfile’s Washington sources report that the US president is placing
all his chips on the single card of his relationship with Putin, as the
key to winning in the world war against the terrorists.This was first reported
by DEBKA-Net-Weekly in Issue 32, October 5, 2001. Every other consideration
has been cast aside. So single-minded is Bush that he was unconcerned when
he and the Chinese president Jiang Zemin found no agreement on a single
issue at the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit that ended in Shanghai
on October 21. Bush seems to believe that China has no option but to fall
in behind the Bush-Putin lead. Beijing has been quick to disprove this
assumption with steps calculated to curtail the spread of US influence
in Pakistan and Central Asia.

With America going full steam ahead in the first phase of its Afghanistan
campaign and preparing to open additional fronts – possibly in Iraq and
Lebanon - and Russia preparing for a major offensive in Chechnya, no one
has much time to spare for Yasser Arafat. Therefore, Israel’s indefinite
troop presence in seven Palestine towns does not unduly perturb too many
officials in Washington or Moscow.

[Syrian President] Assad, on the other hand, may find himself faced
with more attention than he likes – not only American demands, but US Marines
landing in Syrian-controlled eastern Lebanon and setting about the task
of eradicating the terrorist bases of the Beqaa Valley.

The Iranian leaders grasped the seriousness of the American threat
first. Over the weekend, they pulled their military and Revolutionary Guards
personnel out of Lebanon, ending a 15-year presence there so as not to
see Iranians killed or captured in an American anti-terrorist operation.

In Israel, the Labor party, while a part of the government unity
lineup, is evincing extreme nervousness over IDF operations in Palestinian
territory. Their foremost complaint, that Israel is recreating a Lebanon
situation, is clearly divorced from the wider context. Not only has the
Labor leader, foreign minister Shimon Peres, endorsed the steps approved
by the defense cabinet to purge Palestinian terrorists in the wake of the
murder of a cabinet minister, but those steps are fully synchronized with
the White House - if not the State Department - and will not be reversed
as long as that consensus lasts